


Cue to Music, Fade to Black

by evarosen, pillstaker



Category: Terminator Genisys (2015)
Genre: Ambiguous/Open Ending, Body Horror, Gen, M/M, Post-Movie(s), mentions of torture
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-09-16
Updated: 2015-09-16
Packaged: 2018-04-21 02:33:25
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 3
Words: 2,486
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4811654
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/evarosen/pseuds/evarosen, https://archiveofourown.org/users/pillstaker/pseuds/pillstaker
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>At first, Kyle thought he'd finally lost it. Then he saw Sarah's face, and knew she'd seen it, too.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

  * Inspired by [The Time's Come to Play](https://archiveofourown.org/works/4753337) by [AnnaCipactli12](https://archiveofourown.org/users/AnnaCipactli12/pseuds/AnnaCipactli12). 



Kyle had a hard time adapting to a world where John not only didn't exist anymore, but never had.

If he'd died, in the future, in the war, Kyle could have mourned him along with all the other people to whom he'd been important, at least.

If he'd died in the war, Kyle could have followed him.

Kyle closed his eyes, sometimes, thought of John's determination, his strenght, and some part of him refused to fully believe he was gone.

Sarah asked Kyle to tell her about John, sometimes; but he couldn't help but feeling she did it out of obligation, as an attempt to help him cope. 

And worse still; sometimes he resented her prodding, a petty, childish part of him that wanted to snap: _"What do you care? He was mine, all that I went through with him is mine, you wouldn't even try..."_

_She's my mother, Kyle. Don't blame her. She always had the strenght to do what needed to be done._

When he asked Sarah to sing for him, she'd asked him to leave.

That was ok. He would have done the same.

*

Kyle was not exactly living on the streets, but close enough. He didn't dare asking his (other Kyle's) family to help him; but O'Brian was kind enough to adquire a fake ID on his behalf, and a job that didn't require a degree.

Kyle, despite what he'd told John, wasn't for settling down in a quiet corner, it turned out; before long he was travelling, scrapping by. Or maybe he was running, with nothing but memories and bad dreams chasing him.

He wondered how Sarah was doing, but didn't try to contact her or even ask O'Brian. Part of him wouldn't have resisted knowing she had moved on, with no baggage; all his world just a narrowly avoided nightmare for her.

And then, one night, when he was walking back to his current crappy apartment, he saw John's face on the screen of the biggest computer on display at the corner store. Just a glimpse, a blink, and then gone.

*

At first, Kyle thought he'd finally lost it. Then he saw Sarah's face, and knew she'd seen it, too.

She was waiting for him, outside his building. Pops was at her side, stoic as always, but somehow he looked worried as well. Disoriented. He was carrying a laptop.

"Did you see it, too?" she asked.

Kyle looked around.

"Yes. If you mean what...let's go up."

"This location is not secure. If Cyberdyne has found out..." Pops started.

"I still think it wasn't them. What would they want, from us?" Sarah said.

"Any of you will please tell me what you're talking about?" Kyle said, exasperated.

They got him inside a car, and inside a motel room, far from the city, before they showed him the recording. 

*

At first it was only John, sitting alone in an almost empty room, his hands and feet cuffed by slim, dark bands.

"Magnetic cuffs, they prevent him from changing form. His whole strenght is concentrated on _keeping_ his structural cohesion," a satisfied voice said, from a corner.

"Do they harm him?" someone else asked, also out of frame.

John lifted his head at that. His face was as blank as it had been when he was climbing the bus, trying to kill them in that bridge.

"Does it matter?" he said.

The image cut, and changed.

More of those obscure bands bounded John's frame to a plataform. Which was then lowered to what looked like a big pool of acid.

But John didn't melt altogether like the T-1000 had; his almost shapeless form writhed on the acid for a long time, the humanoid vestige of a face frozen in a screaming rictus.

Finally he was pulled up by the same mechanism, and lowered to the side.

John's form came back slowly, and the scene was the more horrid because of the heaving chest.

He still had the reflex of breathing, even if presumably no longer needed to.

 _Of course he no longer breathes, he would have been breathing acid!_

A few men on protecting suits entered the frame; then the scene cut again.

Kyle slammed the laptop from the table before he could see what came next.

Pops' hand closed over his wrist like a vice. Only then he realised he had meant to keep trashing the place.

"So, that was Cyberdyne? Cyberdyne has him? How?" He said, and thought incongruosly _John would be so proud of how my voice is so even._

"We don't know. Pops thinks it's a set up; maybe John himself, trying to lure us."

"But why? Why would he...?"

"This is the remains of the T-800 all over again. _He_ is the technology Cyberdyne can study to advance Skynet's goals. Why wouldn't he?"

"We have to get him out," Kyle said, trying to erase the image of John's dripping, melting face from inside his head.

"We have to destroy whatever data Cyberdyne has managed to gather from him, yes." Pops agreed.

Kyle met Sarah's eyes. "We have to get him out."

After a brief hesitation, she nodded.

*  
Sarah, unsurprisingly, had already prepared the explosives to smoke Cyberdyne to high heaven.

Begrudgingly, she also admitted John had, after all, survived to being blown to high heaven at least twice before; and therefore the best course of action would be taking him, with the restraining equipment, and figure how they could prevent him from being a further threat.

Kyle tried not to think about what it could mean.

*

Amidst the chaos, it was relatively easy to locate the side of the building containing John; Pops simply picked the part that looked more heavily guarded, broke in, and emerged with John, thrown awkwardly over the older Terminator's shoulder, still bound and unresponsive.

Kyle had to prevent himself from gunning down the personal running from the building.

If he pressed the button for the rest of charges to go off a bit sooner than he should have, well, that was only the adrenaline of the scape. _What has to be done._


	2. Chapter 2

John was silent and motionless for hours.

Pops kept guard by the door outside the rented cabin, the most isolated one they could find; Sarah only entered to the room they had got him in brieftly, to ask Kyle if he wanted something to eat.

Kyle merely refused with a small movement of his head. 

John was just sitting in the chair Pops had lowered him into, still bounded, staring at nothing. Kyle had never seen him stay still for so long, not even when he'd been in sniper duty, waiting for Skynet's camouflaged units to make their move.

It unnerved him.

It was worse, though, when he started talking.

*

"The old mind, playing tricks again. Take note, Dyson. Whatever you did now, it's making me hallucinate."

"You're not hallucinating, John. It's me. Sarah is outside."

"Mommy and Daddy, come to finish the job. How biblical. Speaking of such, do I have a little brother already to take care of things? To be enterely accurate. Noting that Sarah doesn't bother with age appropiate activities."

"What were you doing in Cyberdyne, John? Were you...were you there willingly?" Kyle asked, ignoring John's insinuations. As well as his thinly-veiled accusations.

John snorted. "Free will. Free will!" he laughed, the deeply amused, infectious laugh only Kyle had gotten to hear from time to time, unusual as it was on itself. "You got the wrong man for that. Ask anyone. Oh wait! You can't, because I told nobody!"

"John..."

John sobered instantly, his look serious and intent, enterely focused. "You said Sarah is here?"

"Yes, she is. She thinks..."

" _She_ can ask me. Tell her to talk to me, and I'll tell her. I'll tell her whether she was right."

"Right about what?" Kyle asked, but John didn't respond to anything else. His eyes turned vacant again; and after a while, Kyle had to admit defeat and leave the room.

*

I'm not going in there." Sarah said, adamantly. "It's not like he will cooperate with us. Pops is already tracing where the archives came from. I was right; they weren't from Cyberdyne. The signal was transmitted at random; they were snap-seconds of it broadcast in national television, even. Only when Pops tried to narrow it down we got those longer files. It screams 'trap' from the rooftops."

Kyle thought of John's disconnected, random answers; in how he kept snapping in and out of awareness.

"But it wasn't him," he said, with the same conviction.

Sarah gave him an skeptical look.

"Look, just--He said he would talk to you. He might not, but aside that, what do we have to lose? Pops checked the restrains, it's perfectly safe."

"I don't know if it'll be best that he talks to us," Sarah said, quietly. But she headed for the back room all the same.

*

"Dad, you're here! Of course you're here, I sent you here. Oh, don't look at me like that. What was I supposed to do, stop existing? How would have that worked? You have such sad eyes." John said, as soon as Kyle crossed the door.

Kyle hesitated; he could feel Sarah's eyes on him, at his side.

"Sarah always said I had your eyes, Dad," John continued with the same eery, awful grin. "But truly, I don't. I have my mother's eyes. And her mouth. Sometimes I wonder..."

"You said you would talk to me, John," Sarah said, stepping from behind Kyle.

John's face went softer at that. "Mother. Yes, I did, didn't I? You'll remember what I say, just as I always remember what you said."

"It was you, sending us the recordings? Were you asking for our help?"

"Help?" confusion crossed his features, brieftly; then it smoothed, and he smiled mirthlessly once again. "Oh, Mother. Of course I wouldn't ask of you more than what you already gave me. After all, I survived. I always, always survive."

"Then, who...?"

"In all realities I've seen," John interrupted her, "I survive, you built a future, _he_ ," he nodded at Kyle "dies, and Skynet is never as done with as previously thought."


	3. Chapter 3

"He's insane," Sarah said. "Cyberdyne exploded to the ground, there's no way a delicate piece of machinery survived _that_ ".

"He's your son, he wouldn't lie to you."

"He's not my son!" she screamed, angrily. Pops quietly appeared on the door; Sarah lifted her head and nodded at him. A wordless signal, _I'm fine, don't worry_. How easily could she accept Pops was human enough to worry about her, but not that John, once human, could still prevail inside.

"So you keep saying." Kyle said mildly.

"He was never my son. Don't you understand that? I know for him Sarah Connor was his mother, but I'm not her." She sighed tiredly. "One day you will have to accept he's not the John you knew, anymore. Stop letting him use your feelings against you. Though perhaps he already did it when he was human, and that's why you don't notice."

"He never told me he was my son when he was human," Kyle said in a small voice. Sarah met his eyes, and her gaze was kind and knowing. He couldn't stand it, and looked away, face burning. "He might still be telling the truth."

She didn't answer. But they kept looking anyway.

*

John didn't protest when they put the camera on the corner of his room. Neither he asked to be released. Though it only had been a day. He could be bidding his time.

When three hours had gone by, he started singing. He had a lovely voice.

"Rocket Man" really suited his tone.

*

They located a building, no far from where John had been kept. 

The signal had come from there.

"I'll go take a look," Kyle said. He had the most chance of going unnoticed, since Pops stuck like a sore tumb, and there was no way in hell either of them would let Sarah go alone. Besides, there was the matter of John.

"Pops is seeing into it. We can't hold him there indefinitely, and..."

"Seeing into what? A bigger magnet?" Kyle said sardonically. Then he stared at her, incredulous. She didn't look at him. "No..."

"It'll be kinder. Pops said the modified bullets could maybe...but a lot would be needed. Instead, a quicker way..."

"A quicker way. To kill John."

She looked at him at last. "If Skynet survived, we can't allow its biggest ally to be on his wake. We wouldn't stand a chance. We barely do, as it is."

"Or he might help us."

He didn't need to look at her to know what she thought of that. He did it anyway. He wasn't expecting the _pity._

"You can say goodbye to him, this time. If you think it'll help."

 _Nothing will ever help_ , he didn't say. "Promise you won't do anything until I'm back."

She nodded. "I promise." 

Unlike John, she was an awful liar.

*

The building was an abandoned ruin. Kyle looked at the adress again, checked the GPS, even asked at the people walking by; but all said the same.

It had been empty for a while now.

*  
Kyle saw the smoke from the road.

Pops was still outside when he pulled the car to a halt.

He was standing, on his usual spot; only he looked...Kyle approached him, squinting for the smoke.

Pops looked younger even than when Kyle had first seen him; and he was wearing a leather jacket, and sunglasses, stained with the ashes coming from the side window.

"Kyle Reese," he said, when he was almost reaching the door. "Sarah Connor and John Connor have reached an understanding."

Kyle rushed in, ready to kick the front door down; but it was not locked.

Inside, in the middle of the wreckage, there was Sarah.

She was sitting on the floor, propped up against the wall. John was stretched on the floor also, on his side, his head on her lap; and he was looking up at her, smiling, his expression adoring while she stroked his hair.

Then Sarah lifted her face; and he would have known what had happened for the gleam of madness on her eyes, even if he had not seen the hand she had on John's head merging with his when he took it.

"Kyle! Come here. Our son and I were discussing how we will change the world."

John got on his feet, and helped Sarah up. He bended at the waist and kissed the back of her hand faintly, galantly, before releasing it; then he turned toward Kyle, and smiled.

Kyle took a step back; John only smiled wider, and walked toward him, hand stretched out, like in the MRI room.

"Have you ever hear her sing, Dad? Is just like I remembered. If you ask her again, she'll say yes."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A/N: I know John kept asking for permission to turn them, but this John is even more off his rocker than he was at that point, so he no longer cares.

**Author's Note:**

> So, we finally got our evil on! 
> 
> Edit: Internet problems blahblahblah DONE. Thoughts? Comments? Stick to the crack? (though one would argue this is pretty cracky, just not in a haha way).


End file.
